The Search for Health Information on the Net among Undergraduate Female Students at Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences

Health and medicine are among the fields in which the information is substantially dependent on the web and online resources, and students educating in these fields are among the numerous users seeking for the health information on the Internet. Hence, the correct knowledge on the amount of student's interest in online health information can result in planning for proper training to search and evaluate the content of online health information. This research consequently was conducted at Ahvaz Jundishapur University in 2014. The research population was composed of a total 219 female undergraduate students participated in our study; in addition, the present research’ tool was a questionnaire titled “using the Internet for health information” whose validity and reliability was approved and estimated 0.89 and 0.5-0.9, respectively. According to the results, 75.6% of students were using the Internet as a source of health information; and majority of them (88.3%) mentioned that profited by general search engines such as Google to find health information too. Most of the health information searched by students on the Web referred to "way of treatment” of diseases and more than half of them (66.9%) highly trusted on online health information. According to the findings of this study, it seems necessary to deliver plans to set in train courses to enable students to assess and validate online content of health information.